This hour and a half talk by Dr. Andrew Wakefield was given in Wisconsin on Dec 2, 2015.

This is Wakefield at his best and well worth watching. He gives a brilliant rundown on the present state of the vaccine controversy in America and he describes the ominous future we face if things do not change. This is both a medical crisis and a human rights issue.

The forces we are up against are enormous and incredibly well-financed. The power and control of the pharmaceutical industry matters more to elected officials than the welfare of their constituents. These forces also control the media. Most Americans have no idea that this horrific fraud is happening right before their eyes.

Wakefield covers recent events, namely William Thompson, the CDC whistleblower, and how a measles outbreak linked to Disneyland led to the end of vaccine choice in California. Using the story of the MMR study cover-up and the revelation of a whistleblower scientist at Merck, he tells his audience how to fight vaccine mandate legislation and win.

I summarized and quoted what Andy said during his talk. I'm sure you'll agree that he is a courageous and outstanding voice in a sea of silence, and his efforts will not be in vain.

Introduction: "Just imagine that you were doing what you loved and what happens is all the world starts to criticize you. Could any of you guys handle that? This has been this guy's life for the last decade. . . . "

Andrew Wakefield: "...When a government subverts the rights of the individuals that it is sworn to serve, ...when those are superseded by special interests, by serving corporations, particularly the pharmaceutical industry, over and above the well-being of the citizens who put them in place, then that republic has come to an end."

Speaking on the explosion in the autism rate and what it means for the future of our county, Wakefield said, "This trend is continuing and there is no sign whatsoever that it will abate."

Something important just happened at Cornell's Alliance for Science, writes Steven M. Druker. Long known as a keen promoter of genetic engineering, the organization has experienced a profound change of direction. Its new director, Sarah Davidson Evanega, has opened an inclusive scientific dialogue on the safety of GMO crops. Who says it's all 'over'?

Surprisingly, the Cornell Alliance for Science, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and strongly promotes genetically engineered (GE) crops, does not seem to share the narrow-minded attitude regularly expressed by one of its chief spokespersons.

Editor's Note -- this week I wrote an article about Six Bad Ideas that led to the autism epidemic, and encouraged other suggestions. Here, Julie Obradovic -- an AOA Contributing Editor of Long Standing -- offers hers. -- Dan Olmsted

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Bad idea #6: Take the most poisonous toxin mankind will likely ever come in contact with and use it as or in medicine for over 500 years.

Bad idea #7: Believe that if you can just get the right form of this toxin in the right amount administered the right way you can harness the poison to kill the bad but not hurt the good without any evidence of that ever being possible.

Bad idea #8: Synthesize it to a new even more toxic manmade form for the purpose of warfare and when that doesn't work out, commercialize it for use on seeds, lumber, and in biologics without any regulators to check for the safety (or sanity) of this practice.

Bad idea #9: Grandfather it into use after the regulators come around still without testing it.

Bad idea #10: Keep it in biologics for decades after being banned for use on seeds and lumber because oops...it's too toxic.

Bad idea #11: Accidentally triple its amount and move up its exposure date to the day of birth (and in the womb for some).

I almost feel sorry for Dr. Bruce Cuthbert, almost…Clearly Dr. Cuthbert has no idea what he was taking on with IACC. Cuthbert lacks the urgency our families feel and spent an inordinate amount of time on administrative details. He already has Dr. Daniel’s extroadinary team organizing these meetings. No need to re-invent the wheel. Instead of giving each member 5 minutes to talk about themselves, autism families would have preferred to hear about each IACC member’s constituency and their top research priorities plus ideas about closing gaps. Be practical!

1) There has been no IACC meeting for 15 months.

2) That is inexcusable, period, end of story, full stop.

3) Dr. Insel chose to ignore his IACC duties for over a year.

4) Nominations for IACC committee members were submitted in a timely fashion (at least by me and almost everyone I know) over 1 year ago! Cuthbert should have apologized, sincerely and repeatedly for the NIH’s failure to hold an IACC meeting for over a year.

5) Instead of taking responsibility Cuthbert said that IACC has not met in 15 months “because these things take time.” No you and Dr. Insel wasted time Dr. Cuthbert. You both clearly wasted a great deal of time.

Then we heard from Dr. Francis Collins. Cuthbert profusely thanked Collins for “attending.” Please, don’t do us any favors Dr. Collins. Collins “attends” one IACC meeting a year by arriving just in time to give a 5 minute speech and then leaving immediately afterwards. That isn’t “attending” it is delivering a short lecture and allowing no Q & A.

Collins has zero understanding of the autism community and was not interested enough to stay an hour to hear from ASD families. Instead of addressing issues families care deeply about, such as the catastrophic rise of ASD, vastly under researched environmental triggers or the failure for the NIH to make any treatment progress over 25 yrs, Collins gave a lecture on the BRAIN initiative. The BRAIN project is basically a study in tool making for brain science. It is not researching any treatments or addressing prevention in any way. This project on tool making will have zero impact on my child and yours, it will not uncover 1 causation factor, nor will it prevent or cure one case of autism.

I am SO Brain Initatived Out! The hype is insane. Total academic self-stimulation. If Collins really understood autism and cared about our families he would know that it is the Microbiome Project that IS actually relevant to our families and offers tremendous here and now value. The Microbiome Project offers almost infinite here and now opportunities to both prevent severe autism and help those suffering with GI problems NOW.

After Collins we heard from all IACC members. I believe the limit of IACC service for an individual is 8 yrs? Someone correct me if I am wrong. Alison Singer of the small Autism Science Foundation has just been re-appointed for her 9th yr of service. The time limit is there for a reason- to give other orgs a chance to sit in those public seats. Additionally ASF has a tiny ASD family base. I am unaware of any services ASF offers families. ASF is primarily a research org funding genetic and early ID science. Yet, those are the two most overfunded areas in the entire NIH ASD research portfolio. All the more reason the NIH should be diversifying the IACC public membership by including organizations that represent gap areas of autism research.

The National Autism Association has about 12,000 members. The NAA offers a myriad of services, personal family support, direct assistance with wandering prevention and a huge 5-day medical and educational conference for ASD families. Wendy Fournier, the NAA president pioneered anti-wandering work and crated the first coalitions. Fournier created the first anti-wandering program, The Big Red Safety Box. It is absurd that, despite being nominated 10 yrs in a row, Wendy has not been allotted an IACC seat.

SafeMinds is an org compromised of 5,000 ASD families. SafeMinds fills a gigantic gap in the ASD science landscape by being the only autism organization SOLELY devoted to enviro research. TACA has over 10,000 members and provides numerous advocacy and mentoring services to families as well as an incredible biomedical and educational (IEPs, insurance workshops…) conferences. THESE orgs deserve seats at the IACC table.

Dr. Rob Ring….The autism community’s disappointment with this man never ceases. Ring wanted that seat, sought that seat, purportedly to represent AS families, NOT the community of geneticists. Can someone remind him of this? Ring asked no questions and basically said nothing other than a boilerplate 2-minute science speech. Dr. Ring you are there to ACTIVELY participate and advocate on behalf of families, not just to take up space.

DeWeerdt acknowledged that genes are a factor in autism and researchers have found "autism-linked genes," but "genetic studies failed to find a single obvious cause." There are "other risks." She listed a lack of folic acid, maternal anti-depressants, premature birth, C-sections, old moms, old dads, pesticides and having babies too close together. DeWeerdt let us know that there are so many factors, and just because something is associated with autism doesn't mean that one can cause the other. Lisa Croen, director of the Autism Research Program at Kaiser Permanente, said that we're spent so much time looking at genetics, 'there's still a ton to be learned.'

DeWeert quoted Marc Weisskopf, associate professor of environmental and occupational epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, who said, 'The problem with epidemiology and observational science is that it’s hard to ever completely know you’ve got causality.'

It's all so confusing. It's hard to know which environmental factors affect the child and which ones affected the mother or the father. And then there's "the time lag" between exposure and diagnosis. There are the pre and post natal exposures.

DeWeert throws out so many possible environment risk factors that the reader could easily figure that it's impossible to know what might be linked to autism in any particular child. She called autism "a puzzle."

There was no sense of urgency, no demand that they learn to PREVENT the disorder, no recognition of the large percentage of autistic children who start out as normally developing babies and who inexplicably lose learned skills and regress into autism. DeWeert didn't mention the current autism rate even once.

So who's to blame for the lack of science on the environmental triggers in autism?

It's all those parents who link vaccines to autism!

DeWeerdt wrote that Hertz-Picciotto feels that the "thoroughly discredited" claim of a connection between vaccines and autism "has contributed to scientists' skepticism about other potential environmental factors." She quoted Hertz-Picciotto: 'I think in the autism field that actually has been a bit of an obstacle because people equate vaccines and environment.'

Ronan had seizures soon after waking up on Christmas Eve. Far from home, the last thing I wanted to worry about were seizures. Taking turns early in the day, someone in the family stayed close to Ronan and sat “seizure watch”.

Extended family was also close by, so we had more sets of eyes and ears to keep watch over Ronan. The extra set of eyes and ears were most welcomed. Everyone generously took time to check in on Ronan.

Family is important to me. They always have been. I welcome their presence and look forward to seeing them. Since we go long stretches in between seeing each other, I also welcome observations they make regarding Ronan. Where I see the baby steps Ronan painstakingly makes, extended family tends to see great strides in his development.

As in the past, their recent observations have not been disappointing.

Extended family notes that Ronan is more aware. He is a bit more vocal. They see an incremental increase in awareness to what others are saying to him, too. They see that he understands and complies more readily to requests being made of him. They like that Ronan is responding to what others are asking him to do and that he’s participating more in group activities, like family prayers. Before, he wasn’t fully cooperating or showing any interest in joining us. He’d wander off, either physically or mentally, showing no interest in what the rest of us were doing. Some say it’s as if there’s more of a family feeling about him.

Something else that some family is noticing is a change in Ronan’s facial expressions. His expressions and his demeanor seem more typical. It’s only after Ronan tries to express himself, and fails to, that Ronan’s difficulties become observable again. While those difficulties still exist, our extended family is encouraged by what they see. I am, too.

My column this week on six bad ideas that triggered the autism epidemic (and how to fix them) led to some thoughtful responses, as well as the usual defense of all things vaccine, this time led by Vincent Iannelli, MD and Eindeker, useful foils of whom I will speak no more (but our commenters will!).

Here are a few of the best "bad ideas" you proposed, with more to come:

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Reader: Stoopid idea number 7: Pretending that autism is a good thing as in "Neurotribes." Yeah it's just great that 30% of people with autism communicate not at all or minimally, 82% unemployment for adult autists, high number wandering and drowning deaths relatively, high murder suicide rates. High numbers with sensory and pain issues. It's just f'g great.

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Kapoore: It's a bad idea to say the "science is in," the science can never be in and be science. Scientific thinking began in the Renaissance with the idea of measuring the known but with a clear understanding that precision was impossible. Modern scientists forget about the unknowable part and so they claim that they have a precise science, a precise vaccine...and when it turns out that they were wrong--like big time wrong--they shove it under the rug and repeat "the science is in."

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Every day I read an article on some aspect of the real science, that is the science that is ongoing and based not on hubris but respect for the evidence--so how could the "science be in" if scientific research is ongoing. However, the worst idea goes to science as dictatorship... now that the science is in we have a new religion and if you don't follow what we say you don't get an education... so taxpaying parents have their children banned from school for some flawed idea such as "vaccine acquired immunity" when in reality what we have is "leaky vaccine acquired immunity" with so much breakthrough disease they have to find someone to blame, and those are the unvaccinated. Put them in jail shout the so-called "scientists" So the worst idea is scientists as inquisitors.

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Betty Bona: Dr. Iannelli,

The problem with your "no worries" position about the new vaccines in the pipeline is that money is more powerful than the best interests of the American citizens. The lack of liability of industry and doctors for harms caused by their vaccine products creates a situation where the safety and efficacy of these products no longer carries as much weight as it should.

In fact, it sets up a situation where products that are truly cancer treatments (or treatments for some other non-infectious condition) will be called vaccines so that the product will enjoy the lack of liability. We're no longer just talking about infectious diseases. Aside from the lack of liability, safety and efficacy standards can be so easily manipulated in the vaccine arena.

Just look at the HPV vaccine. Everyone knows that we won't know if it is efficacious until the recipients reach the age when they might be expected to contract cervical cancer. Really, is that a vaccine against an infectious disease, or is it a cancer prevention strategy? Didn't we already have a cancer prevention strategy that worked quite well - the pap smear?

As for safety, you need look no further than the newly approved, fast-tracked flu shot for the elderly. I don't know if you are 65 yet, but if you are, do you plan on being one of the guinea pigs for this new flu shot for the elderly? I say guinea pigs because it is fast-tracked and not fully tested. The last shot for the elderly included a larger amount of virus per shot. That was unsuccessful, so they are approaching the problem from the adjuvant side, adding squalene and polysorbate 80 to the shot in hopes that it will work better in the elderly.

That adjuvant does not have a great safety profile given the incidence of narcolepsy in children receiving the H1N1 squalene/polysorbate 80 adjuvanted vaccine in Europe in 2009. The young and the elderly are vulnerable. Does it make sense to fast-track this vaccine? After the failure of last year's high antigen flu shot for the elderly, I think loss of sales that might have occurred in flu shots for the elderly this year prompted the fast-tracking.

In other words, I think they abandoned safety considerations for profit. What do you think? Have you received your MF59 adjuvanted flu shot this year? If you feel so comfortable with the ever increasing creep of vaccines, maybe you should get that shot even if you are not 65 just to show your complete trust in the vaccine program. I won't touch it with a ten-foot pole, and I sincerely hope I am never mandated to act as a guinea pig like the elderly are doing this year. At least they can still refuse (though that right is somewhat meaningless in some of the elderly).

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Linda1: One of the first things that I noticed years ago about allopathic medicine is what is called cascading intervention. The patient presents with a problem, oftentimes caused by a medical misstep, a drug taken or a natural biological rhythm or balance disturbed that needs restoring.

To solve the problem, the physician doesn't recognize the cause of the problem, but orders one or more interventions that causes other problems which lead to other interventions which do not solve anything but that cause other problems which lead to other interventions which lead to...and on and on and on until the patient is worse than ever and is tethered to and hooked on a medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs.

Let's take a trip back to Christmas, 1962. A little girl named Michele had a Christmas wish for Santa. Michele wanted to play Mommy. Mommies used to take care of sick children. It was part of their job description. Sniffles and sneezes, spotty rashes and wheezes. That was childhood, after all. Get sick, build an immune system, grow up. Michele got a wonderful new doll from Santa that year. Her name was Hedda.

Hedda slept through the night like a dream.

Hedda smiled at her Mommy

Hedda had one more face. In 1962, it was a face that every Mommy recognized and knew how to care for and love.

Those are my two daughters in 1995. They were watching a favorite Christmas video, The Snowman, based on the UK story by Raymond Briggs. Unlike our giddy, holiday Frosty, the Snowman, the UK version is a beautiful, haunting story of love and loss. The many times I watched it with Meg -- winter, summer, fall,spring -- it didn't matter the season. Nights she woke up crying from gastrointestinal pain or intense, physical distress, she wanted to watch, The Snowman, but she could never, ever watch when he melted. She would leave the room.

Megan, now eighteen, has both an autism diagnosis and an autoimmune diagnosis. Rare? Unrelated? I think not. I believe as we end 2011 and enter into 2012, the upcoming year will bring us more facts and research into the connection between autism and autoimmunity. With that, let's say goodbye to the autism ghosts of Christmas past which gave little hope for meaningful research on preventing new cases of autism (regression) or research on medical treatments for those currently affected (progression) Junky genetic studies, Drosophilia eye-gazing, unknown autism prevalence, and bullshit research has to END. We know that bacteria, viruses and metals can cause autoimmune effects and the research needs to be centered around that.

Going back in time each holiday season, the ghosts of past Christmases can haunt those living with autism and autoimmunity. In 1995, my daughter's autism diagnosis was never related to her ongoing illnesses with Streptoccocus and other bacterial infections as well as numerous viral infections. Labs now have shown IgG quantitative titers for each -- Measles-Mumps-Rubella -- to be elevated. That was the vaccine that dramatically affected my daughter with many days of rash, fever, GI issues, loss of language and then odd visual issues. Brief definition of IgG:

Antibody testing Measles and mumps (rubella) antibodies are virus-specific proteins produced by the immune system in response to an infection by the measles or mumps ( & rubella) virus, or in response to vaccination. There are two types of antibodies produced, IgM and IgG. The first type to appear in the blood after exposure or vaccination is IgM antibodies. Levels of IgM antibodies increase for several days to a maximum concentration and then begin to taper off over the next few weeks. IgG antibodies take a bit longer to appear, but once they do, they stay in the bloodstream for life, providing protection against re-infection..

There are very sick children and young adults with an autism diagnosis, and there seems to be mounting evidence that the MMR (Measles Mumps Rubella) vaccine has quite possibly left its mark in them. So back to high titers and autism. If a toddler is vaccinated at 15 months, what is happening to produce very high titers 18 years later? Why are the Drosophilia scientists not dropping the fruit flies and looking at viral titers -- or Strep in those affected by autism?

We probably all know the saying that Ideas Matter. Lately I’ve been mulling a handful of ideas – very bad ideas, I’d say – that have come together to trigger, expand, and perpetuate the autism epidemic and a host of allied disorders that constitute The Age of Autism.

Today I’m going to lay them out in brief, and in coming days I’ll say more about each one, and end with the counter-ideas that could really bring us a happy new year.

Please add your own!

Bad Idea Number One. Vaccines are the Eric Clapton of Medicine; they are God. Vaccines are the number one medical accomplishment of all time, and every day in every way they make our world safer and safer. Bow down!

Bad Idea Number Two. The evidence for Number One is clear. “Study after study” has shown that vaccines work wonderfully and that the so-called “risks” are effectively zero – a one-in-a-million chance of anything serious happening. (“One in a million” is pharma speak for zip, zilch, nada, roll up your sleeve.)

Bad Idea Number Three. Disagreeing with Numbers One and Two is Unacceptable Speech. Claims that vaccines are more dangerous than advertised are bogus and should be suppressed. You need to be a conspiracy theorist, a purveyor of junk science, a pathetically gullible parent looking for someone to blame for your damaged kid, or out-and-out anti-vaccine to harbor such ideas.

Bad Idea Number Four. Conflicts Don’t Count. Drugmakers, doctors, legislators, bureaucrats, TV programs buoyed by pharma money are immune to the usual concerns that conflicts of interest -- profits, incentives, campaign contributions, ad dollars, liability worries -- require extra vigilance by the press and public. The drug companies may be caught red-handed in corrupt dealing, Congress bought off, the media lazy and desperate for drug dollars, but when it comes to vaccines (see Number One), they have only our health at heart!

Bad Idea Number Five. Because the first four are true, we must trust The Experts who are working hard every day to help us stay happy and healthy. They are god’s messengers on earth.

The vaccine industry is currently estimated to be a $30 billion dollar per year industry, with some projecting it will be a $100 billion dollar per year industry by 2020. Many believed this an absurd prediction until it became clear that the industry was not planning on increasing revenue in such a short period of time by introducing new products, but rather by compelling vaccine uptake in greater numbers and in groups that have never had mandates before. In fact, 2015 saw more than 100 bills introduced nationwide to increase vaccine sales, not just for children and members of the military, but now for adults in the civilian world.

The veterans affairs funding bill, which has passed the Senate and is now in the House, may be one of those measures.

IN GENERAL.—Not later than two years after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall submit to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs of the Senate and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs of the House of Representatives a report on the development and implementation by the Department of Veterans Affairs of quality measures and metrics, including targets for compliance, to ensure that veterans receiving medical services under chapter 17 of title 38, United States Code, receive each immunization on the recommended adult immunization schedule at the time such immunization is indicated on that schedule.

This makes Australia one of the most aggressive vaccinating countries in the world, along with the United States.

The lack of due consideration by our political representatives on this matter critical to citizens’ liberty and bodily autonomy has rocked my confidence in the political process in Australia, where vaccination policy appears to have been hijacked by vested interests.

There remains a lack of transparency for members of other groups influencing vaccination policy in Australia, i.e. the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC); the TGA Advisory Committee on the Safety of Vaccines (ACSOV); the Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee (AIVC); and the Working Group and Oversight Committee for the Australian Academy of Science publication The Science of Immunisation: Questions and Answers, which was funded by the Australian Federal Government’s Department of Health and Ageing.

The members of these vaccination groups wield enormous power. These people are part of a process that can result in government mandating of medical interventions for healthy people, i.e. vaccinations. The decisions these people make affect not only children and adults in Australia, but can also impact internationally as the ripple effect of their decisions spreads to other countries in a ‘domino effect’ which is useful for vaccine manufacturers developing the international vaccine market.

As the decisions of these vaccination groups also result in massive sales of vaccine products for vaccine manufacturers, it is vital that the process of adding vaccine products to the Australian national vaccination schedule is open and transparent, and that any potential ‘conflicts of interest’ of vaccination group members are accessible for public perusal. Read more at Over-Vaccination.net.

I guess if you're a health official, you can say anything and it remains unchallenged. Three major newspapers in New York City directly quote NY Health Commissioner Mary Bassett citing two entirely different statistics on mortality from the flu.

There's a big whoop-la going on over the ruling by the NY State Supreme Court ruling AGAINST the flu shot mandate for preschool kids in NYC.

The press immediately warned us about the impending death toll from the flu....BUT JUST WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE??? Just how deadly is the flu????

FOR YEARS we've been told that 36,000 Americans die of the flu each year. On DEC 17, News 4 in Jacksonville FL and Forbes Mag. reminded us that 36,000 of us will die this year of the flu....

Dec 17, 2015, New York Daily News: Manhattan judge tosses requirement that city preschool students get flu shots

"DAVIE COUNTY, N.C. – Pertussis – commonly known as whooping cough – is a serious bacteria. It causes spasms of severe coughing, which can cause those who have it to vomit and lose breath. In the worst cases, it can be deadly. In recent weeks, it made its way to two schools in Davie County.

The first case was reported on December 7. Today, the school system reported 13 confirmed cases, 11 in Davie High School, and two in the early college.

“That’s pretty alarming actually, it really is,” said Patrick Jacobs, father of a Davie High sophomore.....The spread of whooping cough is most easily prevented by receiving the DTwP shot. However – and this is particularly troubling – all 13 of the people confirmed to have Pertussis had gotten the vaccine.

“If it’s getting that bad, I think everybody should know, and know the risk, and know everything about it,” said Regina Hicks, mother of a Davie High senior.

...and then a study on this exact phenomenon- but where is the protection, especially when vaccinated people are spreading the disease?

Presidential campaign politics generally brings a lot of surprises and some WTF moments, all courtesy of candidates and their political parties. And mixed into this year’s campaign rhetoric of false promises and fear mongering are two pieces of legislation that needs to be examined very closely.

First, in May of 2015, the US House passed the 21st Century Cures Act or HR.6. Autism Speaks and other disability advocate organizations praised the House of its passage. I wrote about how problematic the legislation will be if the Senate passes the bill in its current form and the President signs it into law.

Currently stalled in the US Senate, the bill is waiting on hearings and hopefully a lot of close scrutiny. Sen Lamar Alexander, Chair of the HELP committee, wants to act upon the legislation in 2016 and also wants to pare it down. What that means remains to be seen. Presidential candidates, Sen Rand Paul and Sen Bernie Sanders are members of the HELP committee.

The bill would dramatically increase funding of the NHI and ask the FDA to accelerate the approval rate of medical interventions, drugs and devices. And that is where the heartburn for most of us begins.

The mechanisms to accomplish this goal are suspect by encouraging the FDA to approve shorter or smaller clinical trials or in some cases, drugs that are not tested in controlled clinical trials.

The most egregious and damning part of this legislation is the expeditious and dangerous circumvention of vaccine clinical trials.

Pharma and the medical device industry were hoping for a big Christmas present before the end of the year. And we would be left with a lump of coal. A new detail regarding the very close relationship between FDA and industry was disclosed earlier this week. News reports now state that FDA Acting Commissioner Stephen Ostroff, and other agency officials, met with representatives from the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) to discuss the Cures legislation.

Second, during the crazy season of presidential campaigns were candidates start introducing legislation in Congress as a way to keep their name on the front page, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, introduces what only can be seen as a complete circumvention of the FDA and an end-around of any and all safety regulations.

The Act would allow “for the reciprocal approval of drugs, devices, and biologics from foreign sponsors in EU member countries, Israel, Australia, Canada, and Japan.” Basically, a drug or medical device manufacturer by obtaining approval from another country with lower safety and clinical trial standards and enter the US market without having to deal with the FDA.

This conversation started when Fiona, my 14-year old daughter, and I were driving home from grocery shopping on Friday afternoon. We continued to add to the conversation after we got home. I wanted to share it for today’s Sunday post. It’s dedicated to Ronan. He turns 13 tomorrow. Happy birthday, Ronan! May you continue to bring us hope, happiness, and joy.

xo, Cat

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Mom, can you believe Ronan’s birthday is on Monday?

I know. I really can’t believe it.

He’s going to be a teenager! I should tell him about things that will happen when he’s a teen.

What kind of things?

Like what to watch out for when he’s out of middle school. Like which people he should hang out with. Like which people he should not hang out with. I’d tell him about what’s trending and which things to follow.

You know that Ronan doesn’t understand a lot of that and that he’s not interested in the things you are. Your teenage years could be very different than what his might look like.

Yeah. I know. But I envision him getting better.

I do, too, honey. I always hope that he will get better.

When he’s better, Ronan will be able to do a lot more than he does now. I need to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble with his friends for talking too loudly during class. He needs to make sure to follow the rules. He’ll have to get used to new stuff like being able to adapt to changes in his environment and routine. I need to help him wear the “cool” clothes, too. He’ll need to get a new phone like an iPhone, not to play on like he does on our old phones but to use it to call or text people.

Well, Ronan can’t talk yet, so I guess you have faith that he someday will and that he’ll need a phone to tell people what’s on his mind.

Yes!

Fiona, do you ever envision Ronan being able to do other typical teenage things?

Like what, Mom?

Like…being interested in girls, maybe? Or try out for sports?

Oh, yes! I would make Ronan to show me a picture of who he likes. I’d ask him to tell me about the girl. I would let him know which girls I think are nice and also warn him who not to hang out with.

As for sports, I want him to try to do soccer or baseball or bowling. If it’s soccer, I could help him since I’ve played it before. If it’s baseball, I’d ask my friend, Josh, to help. Josh played baseball before, and he knows Ronan pretty well. And I totally trust him with my brother. Ronan also loves bowling on the Wii. We should take him to the bowling alley more often. I know that he’d love that!

These recent comments by Albert Enayati, an early vaccine safety advocate, to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee are worth everyone's attention. "I think it may be beneficial to the other parents who say their children regressed to autism through childhood immunization," he says. We agree. The list of studies at the end is terrific.

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“Vaccines Caused Payam’s Autism” --Testimony Presented By Albert Enayati, MSME, Research Scientist, Senior System Engineer. Father of Payam, who regressed into autism after his childhood vaccinations, Board Member of SafeMinds and APRC

My name is Albert Enayati. I am a board member of SafeMinds and APRC, both volunteer organizations focused on identifying and removing the harmful environmental agents contributing to the severe disability that frequently accompanies autism. Sadly, despite my 20 years of autism advocacy, we are still ignoring environmental risk factors, with no safe and effective medications or prevention strategy in sight. No conclusive biomarkers have been identified and no new treatments validated. Over the past seven years of IACC coordination, Federal agencies have spent 1.6 billion dollars in many fields of autism research, but environmental research has been underfunded and autism prevalence continues unabated, including severely disabling cases.

It is time to dedicate resources to a more fruitful path; environmental causation of autism. Within this field, a topic in need of funding is the role of vaccines in autism etiology.. Please take note that a recent study among parents by the Simons Foundation found that 42% of parents felt vaccines contributed to their child's autism.1, The IACC should not ignore this large segment of the community and observations by so many parents regarding their children's developmental history.

In 2009 the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) 2, 3, 4 recommended to this committee a number of feasible research proposals on vaccines and autism. Not a single one has been implemented.

My son Payam regressed after his vaccinations. He is suffering from his autism and breaks my heart piece by piece. He has serious self-injurious behavior. He has run away, ended up in the emergency room, and been tased by law enforcement. His finger was nearly amputated because he cannot communicate his pain from infection. His medications don't help. Meanwhile, the main decision-makers on autism research, here at the IACC – the NIH, CDC, Autism Speaks and the Simons Foundation - have been discriminating against children like my son and many children across the country whose parents report regressions after their childhood immunizations. Even if it is “unpopular”, it is ethically imperative that we investigate these reports and study these children. Public health is not simply freedom from infectious disease. Autism is not always a gift or alternate way of being. It often comes with a great cost. My son deserves to have attention paid to him and research done to help him have a better quality of life.

On many occasions Dr. Insel informed me that “science does not support my point of view”. In fact, very little meaningful science has been done on vaccines and autism, only a small fraction of possibilities have even been looked at, and the studies that have been published are riddled with conflicts of interest, data manipulation and in the case of Dr. Thorsen, indictment for financial research fraud. In addition, Dr. William Thompson, a senior researcher at the CDC who has whistleblower status, has reported dumping inconvenient data in a garbage can, along with colleagues, to avoid reporting an increased risk of autism in African American boys who received MMR vaccine.

A 2011 study by the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee5 evaluated the evidence on possible causal associations between immunizations and certain adverse outcomes. In 135 of 158 pairs evaluated, they found that “evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship”. They found no relationship between MMR and autism, but given that their evaluation included studies like the one where data was dumped, the safety of our children demands that we allow for future research to inform the questions.

Even the package insert for DTaP6 vaccine suggests that we need further study. Here’s a quote from 2005: [emphasis added]

“Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.”

Yet, there are no studies looking specifically at autism and receipt of DTaP vaccines.

JURIST Guest Columnist Mary S. Holland from the New York University School of Law discusses the legality of censoring speech on vaccines and autism:

n a recent guest column, Professors James G. Hodge, Jr. and Doug Campos-Outcalt explore ways to limit presidential candidates' speech about a link between vaccines and autism. Noting recent comments by Trump, Carson and Paul associating vaccines and autism, the authors decry the politicians' "free pass" to "spread such public health lies." They even suggest that the candidates' statements are the equivalent of yelling "gun fire" in a crowded theater and accuse them of being "brokers of public health fabrications." Strong stuff! As the authors correctly note, however, the First Amendment offers little support for their proposed censorship.

As a threshold question, though, how do the authors know that the candidates' underlying assertions are false? Has a vaccine-autism link been "debunked," as they suggest? With the US autism rate among children continuing to skyrocket, having climbed from 1 in 110 children in 2011 to an estimated 1 in 45 children today, the question is critical. Are those who make a connection between autism and vaccines yelling "fire" in a crowded theater? Or, alternatively, are those who seek to suppress free speech trying to restrict people from yelling "fire" in a theater when there is indeed a fire, thus escalating potential harm? Can we possibly hope to establish truth without robust public discourse? I for one do not think so. The US embraces free speech more fully than any other country in the world precisely to ensure that the marketplace of ideas, and not government censors, ultimately decide what constitutes truth.

The Catholic nuns have said that instruction was issued by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), who deny the accusation. The CICA were examining the vaccine trials until legal action halted the investigation.Irish Central reports:

The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary made this claim, through their lawyers, in a letter to Tusla, Ireland’s the Child and Family Agency. The letter, dated January 2015, was released to the Cork-based newspaper, the Irish Examiner, under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Irish Examiner reports that in August 2014 a letter was sent by assistant principal social worker Pearl Doyle asking a series of questions in relation to material transferred by request to Tusla, in 2011. This letter was sent as the Irish Government was proposing setting up an investigation into mother and baby homes.

In the letter a total of 23 questions were posed concerning infant mortality, burials, financial records and, vaccine records. Among these questions Doyle asked where the “complete” list of vaccine records are and how children were chosen, whether the consent of the mother was obtained and, if so, where these consent forms are.

Five months later the order of nuns replied, through their lawyers, reported that they had been instructed to destroy “all documents on the advice of the CICA.

This decision is a win for parental choice and basic American civil rights. Let's hope this begins a trend back to a more rational form of pediatric healthcare and an end to mandates. From Autism Action Network:

A New York Court issued a decision today overturning a Bloomberg-era regulation requiring all children age 6-months through 59 months to obtain a flu shot in order to attend pre-schools, daycare centers or Head Start programs regulated by the City of New York. The rule was set to go into effect in January 1, 2016.

Aaron Siri, attorney for the families who sued the city and the families themselves will hold a press conference at 60 Centre Street, in Manhattan at 11 am on Thursday, December 17, 2015.

Please come to the New York Supreme Court Building steps at 60 Centre Street tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 17, on Foley Square in downtown Manhattan for an 11 am press conference with the parents who sued the city and Aaron Siri, their attorney, who won a permanent injunction today on the New York City regulation that would require children ages 6-59 months to get flu shots or get kicked out of pre-school, daycare and Head Start.

There hasn't been a word in the media yet about the NY Supreme Court injunction shutting down the illegal city flu shot requirement. Coincidence? Not a chance. Don't bring signs. Please dress professionally. Be there. What you do counts.

What do Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), Gulf War Syndrome and shady vaccination policies have to do with the United Kingdom (UK) government? Using a wide selection of studies, papers and documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, two highly regarded vaccine researchers have uncovered how, by prioritizing vaccination policy over vaccine safety, the Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), the Department of Health (DH), the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) and the Ministry of Defence may have damaged the health of millions of people worldwide.

Written in two sections, LucijaTomljenovic, PhD, and Christina England have discussed important issues that they believe could be affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of families around the world.

In part one, England discussed the history of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), looking carefully at the questionable research behind the label. Using exhaustive research, she has outlined a detailed history of MSBP, why its diagnosis appears to be given to families with vaccine-injured children and why the medical profession chooses to blame parents instead of admitting the truth about vaccines. Using government documents, England has disclosed evidence that suggests professionals behind the false diagnosis are linked to the pharmaceutical industry and the vaccination programs.

In 2002, a furniture salesman named Jason Padgett was viciously attacked outside a karaoke bar in Tacoma, Washington. As a result, he became a math genius and was able to visualize complex geometric and physics concepts.

"I see shapes and angles everywhere in real life" — from the geometry of a rainbow, to the fractals in water spiraling down a drain, Padgett told her. "It's just really beautiful."

It may be beautiful, but how many of us would choose being beaten within an inch of our life in order to gain what, in another context, could be called savant skills? (Padgett says it's worth it, even though he developed, interestingly enough, PTSD, OCD and social anxiety. I'd rather skip the whole thing, and I'd certainly like a vote before the hammer came down on me.)

I’ve been collecting stories like this for a while, in which being a savant is associated with damage of one kind or another, and now seems a useful time to put a few together. With the rise of Neurotribes and the overall normalization of autism in which Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang theory – a physics whiz with obvious autistic traits – is supposed to be funny, you would think that the modern world of computers and phones and flying machines essentially depended on autistic savants who just love calculating things in seconds so the rest of us can gape.

And yet, what a truncated world they so often end up inhabiting – if autism is a brain injury, which I believe it is, then savant skills are a rare side effect that are hardly worth the trouble. I believe we, and they, would get along just fine without this kind of collateral damage masquerading as a gift. I mean, in the context of a raging epidemic of human-induced suffering, who really cares if cows have a calmer trip to the slaughterhouse?

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It’s wild the number of times that I come across metal, and not the kind you get clobbered with outside a karaoke club, in connection with savant skills and autism. Exposure to toxic metals, both from without in the form of family or workplace exposure, and within in the form of vaccine ingredients, just about cry out “Guilty!”

Note: For a glaring example of the angry denial hurled at us, see the screenshot of a FB page exchange below from a reader. I posted something very similar to this on our AofA page. You'll shake your head - she claims to be an autism Mom.... Perhaps a Mama troll....

By Kim Stagliano

My daughter is 21 today. She ages out into a world wholly unprepared for the reality of autism in ANY form - high, low or in between.

I had a non-medicated birth to keep chemicals out of her body. I refused every form of pain medication. I hired a birth doula to make sure the nursing staff let me labor and deliver the way I chose. I had a great OB who supported my decision.

Her pediatrician, whom I interviewed with great care, he who was so proud of his MENSA membership, then injected over 200 micrograms of mercury into her body before her 3rd birthday - and I had no idea. To me, vaccines were not a product to question. They were a given. If anyone had told me there was danger I'd have laughed in his or her face. Sneered even. I thought about safe laundry soap, cribs, car seats, paint, toys, I did not drink while nursing. Her pediatrician wiped out all of that with every "well" visit.

My "career" (such as it is) became predicated on her descent into autism. Today is a melancholy day for me - even though we celebrate her with joy and of course, GF cake. Few of us ever share this reality - it's hard to do. Especially when you're thought of as Mother Teresa. I'm not. You don't have to be either. We're human.

At home, like so many of you, I quietly reflect on the assault on us, parents of vaccine injured kids. The hatred toward us for speaking out truth. The media's programmed evisceration of us, of the doctors who dare to speak out. The bloggers who deride us, deny our kids' very real plight with unbridled joy. The people with autism who instead of helping, turn their backs on their more impaired brothers and sisters. And the most jarring? The fellow MOTHERS who scorn us and work against us. It's astounding, isn't it?

The chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the British equivalent of the ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices), Prof Andrew J Pollard spoke this September at an event sponsored by vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline "Evening of Evidence/Vaccination Science to Policy: Introduction of new vaccines to the UK vaccine schedule with limited evidence of efficacy (sic): Meningococcal Group B and maternal pertussis vaccination". Prof Pollard spoke on the subject of Meningitis B vaccine which he helped to develop and latterly seems to have superintended the process of having it added to the United Kingdom vaccine schedule as chairman of the JCVI – his talk was entitled: "JCVI decision-making process informing the recommendation for the introduction of Bexsero to the UK vaccination schedule". Bexsero vaccine was developed by Novartis but their vaccine division was acquired by GSK earlier this year, following the approval of Bexsero vaccine by the JCVI (negotiations began within days of the JCVI approval). A deputy chair of the JCVI, Dr Andrew Riordan, spoke at the same meeting on the subject: "Evidence considered by the JCVI to recommend antenatal pertussis vaccination in the UK". GSK also manufacture Boostrix – in fact a pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria vaccine – which is the product currently given to pregnant women in the UK, which also has an aluminium adjuvant.

Last week members of the Scottish Parliament heard how Prof Pollard apparently chaired a session of the JCVI in March 2014 which recommended Bexsero for British infants, though the committee under a different chairmanship had rejected it months earlier. It was not disclosed on the records of the committee that Prof Pollard was “named in patents in the field of meningococcal vaccines” and was contracted in continuing research relating to Bexsero. The JCVI revised Code Of Practice requires that the Chair “cannot have any interests that may conflict with his or her responsibilities to JCVI” and also that “the JCVI Chair and Sub committee chairs cannot have interests that could conflict with the issues under consideration by the JCVI or Sub Committee respectively”. Prof Pollard also heads the Oxford Vaccines Group, which though an agency of the National Health Service owes its existence to accepting contracts from pharmaceutical manufacturers and other bodies trying to promote vaccines.

It is disturbing to note that every single one of the eight speakers at the GSK sponsored event, hosted by the Royal College of Child Health and Paediatrics were in some way employees of the British state including bodies such as Public Health England (which is supposed to provide independent scientific advice) and the MHRA (the UK licensing authority). The drinks interval was nudgingly billed on the flier as “Refreshments and Networking”.

- The PBAC rejected the re-submission requesting listing of the 4CMenB vaccine on the NIP Schedule for the prevention of meningococcal B disease in infants and adolescents. The basis of the rejection was that the re-submission did not address multiple uncertainties in relation to the clinical effectiveness of the vaccine against the disease when delivered in a vaccination program, that the use of optimistic assumptions about the extent and duration of effect and herd immunity as raised by the PBAC in previous consideration of this vaccine were not addressed, and the unacceptably high and uncertain ICER, presented in the re-submission.

Two groundbreaking studies implicate specific bacterial species in regulating gut immunity and response to immunotherapy in physically distant tumors — an entirely new angle in cancer therapy. The influence of the microbiome on cancer susceptibility and therapy effectiveness has been shown. Furthermore, commensal organisms have critical roles in tuning immunity at epithelial surfaces, suggesting their potential role in regulating immunotherapy response.

Sivan and colleagues compared genetically identical mice obtained from two different mouse facilities that had different gut microbiota. Interestingly, these mice reacted differently to syngeneic implanted mouse melanoma tumors, apparently because of differences in the vigor of their anti-tumor T-cell responses. These differences were eliminated by cohousing and could be reversed by fecal transplantation from the mice with anti-tumor immunity, implicating the gut microbiome. Furthermore, fecal transfer augmented responses to anti–PD-L1 immunotherapy. Following sequencing of the bacteria, they found that Bifidobacterium species were overrepresented in mice with better anti-tumor immunity, and introduction of those species into the other mice produced anti-tumor responses.

The take home message -

1- Genes do NOT seem to be the sole avenue of research in all cancers as these mice had identical genes.

2- It was their MICROBIOME that was the epicenter to cancer DEVELOPMENT.

3- It was their MICROBIOME that was the epicenter to cancer TREATMENT.

4- Bifidobacterium were the good guy bacteria that had anti-tumor qualities.

5- Bifidobacterium placed into other mice produced their ability to fight tumors.

Ronan usually wakes up sluggish around 9am. He woke up bright and early at 4am on Monday last week. I had woken up just a few hours earlier because of a nightmare. I tossed and turned through the early morning hours, but ended up getting only 3 hours of sleep. I knew it was going to be a long day for both us. Thankfully, extra help was on the way. Ronan’s therapist would be here at 10am.

Ronan was in good spirits despite the o’dark-thirty wake up. He continued to be chipper and active when his therapist arrived later that morning. Explaining how the day had started, she was pleased to see that Ronan was so happy, but she knew he’d soon tire. With that in mind, we rearranged and shortened the day’s agenda. Even though we’d scaled back some of the activities, we kept with the plan to go out into the community.

For the last few weeks, after watching Ronan display an increase in negative behaviors when we were in town, we’ve been practicing going out. In the past, some outings with Ronan have ended terribly. Not every one of our outings turns into a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day, but toward the end of the summer, Ronan’s behaviors were consistently tanking. With each attempt I tried to get Ronan out the door, in the car, out of the car, to the store or to wherever it was we were going, he got more and more frustrated. He also started to become somewhat aggressive.

Ronan doesn’t like to be frustrated, and I don’t like to see him get to that point either. When the every-now-and-then negative behaviors began to occur more frequently, a friend of ours suggested that I look at Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy again. It’s worked for us before, and since I’d tapped out of my knowledge and ability to redirect Ronan to more appropriate choices and behaviors, I knew that it was time to ask someone else for help. I’m glad that I did.

Druin Burch, an Oxford physician and professor, has penned a fine piece, appearing in the December/January issue of Natural History, advocating for placebo-controlled trials for all medical interventions. It’s a good read.

Some gems: “In the nineteenth century, improvements in public health practices had greatly prolonged human life. Medicine itself, however, only started doing more good than harm around World War II . ..”

In a discussion of childhood cancer treatments: “Giving new treatments to children outside of controlled trials is not merciful compassion. It’s a gamble in which the child is as likely to be hurt as helped, and after which-due to the lack of control-we won’t even be able to tell which effect the treatment has had.”

He speaks of the appeal of dogma, calling historical and current medical wisdom “eminence-based medicine.” Does this sound like CDC vaccine policy? He makes exception only for existing drugs known to be safe for use in diseases with high case-fatality rates (his example being Ebola).

But then he makes this curious statement: “Similar arguments could be made for some vaccines, provided those vaccines are closely related to ones for which we already have abundant knowledge.”

Abundant knowledge from placebo-controlled trials? Please, Dr. Burch, give us the names and dates of those trials, the outcomes, the raw data. I know of only one: One of the six Gardasil trials had a very small saline placebo arm, in addition to the adjuvant (Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate) arm. The data in the tables for pain, swelling, and redness are broken out into the three arms. For all serious adverse reactions, however, the placebo data are hidden, lumped together with the adjuvant arm in the tables, to give roughly the same rate of 2.3%. This is not science. It is flim flam.

Daily Kos, the reliably vaccines-are-perfect-because-they-are-a-progressive-health-care-cornerstone site that unaccountably ran an article last week about the risk from Big Pharma and the promiscuous promoting of vaccines, is now banning comments by a fan of the article because, they say, she's backing a conspiracy theory!

“This headline,” we said, “does not overhype the article, which is a spectacularly – spectacularly! -- good look at how pharma has taken over medicine, government and mainstream media. Embedded within, and all the more powerful for it, is a look at the vaccine disaster. Sample:

“I’ll say it first: we no longer live in a democracy. We live in a fascist Pharmatopic Republic.

“The saddest part about living in this fascist state is that most people in America are not even aware of this new reality. In fact, in the public shaming of those who want safe vaccines, the American public is an unwitting victim of mass propaganda – and those doing the shaming are analogous to jack-booted thugs. Those in the blogosphere resort immediately to ad-hominem attacks at the first hint of logic and rational discourse. Even asking a question on vaccine safety makes one suddenly ‘anti-vax.’ (Disclosure: Both of my sons are fully vaccinated. I draw the line at HPV.)”

Now, a commenter (and AOA reader) named Twyla tells us her comments were removed when they applauded the article. She asked Daily Kos to explain themselves and the first thing she got back looks like it was an internal communication that wasn’t meant for her:

This message from Twyla is more than a little disingenuous. S/he's been warned before (when she should have been banned but, according to a commenter in the thread, Elfling gave Twyla a warning instead) about posting anti-vax stuff here but she's at it again.

Posting anti-vaxxer comments/diaries is supposed to be automatic banning, per Kos (I'm too tired and near bedtime to find that link).

On the same day in the same thread, there were other anti-vaxxers who were obviously sock puppets. They're BOJO'D. Some commenters wondered if the sock puppets were creations of Twyla. I don't have an opinion on that.

It comes across as an anti vaxxer comment to me, but I didn't flag or even see it. Conspiracy theories are not allowed, and anti vaxxers run along CT lines, so that is probably why.

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So, our story so far: Twyla supported an article that Daily Kos wrote, but Daily Kos inadvertently sent her their own internal discussion about never, ever running anything that’s critical of any aspect of the vaccine program. They wonder whether other favorable comments are Twyla “sock puppets,” meaning people who are encouraged to mimic her ideas.

My message is not at all disingenuous. I was warned about posting about an autism-vaccine link. I don't remember what my comment said, but I don't think it was about an autism-vaccine link? I was never told that I'm not allowed to post anything critical of vaccines. Really??? Are vaccines so sacrosanct that nobody is allowed to speak ill of them?? And I truly am not anti-vaccine. I am critical of our current vaccine program, which is out of control. I view vaccines as an important weapon in our war on communicable diseases. But that doesn't mean we have limitless capacity for absorbing more and more of them. And the injured veterans of our war on disease need study and treatment. Denying vaccine injuries does not help the vaccine program.

I have not created any "sock puppets". I only post under my own name.

And it's silly to call everyone with concerns about vaccines "anti-vaxxer". If people have concerns about contaminated food, plane crashes, or automobile malfunctions (such as sudden acceleration in Toyotas, or Pintos catching fire), does that make them anti-food, anti-airplanes, or anti-car? Yes, some people are truly anti-vaccine. But others argue for a more moderate vaccine program, with attention paid to the unintended collateral damage. We need a much better understanding of why vaccine injuries occur, who is susceptible, how to prevent these reactions, and how to treat them when they do occur.

I'm so disappointed in Daily Kos for censoring discussion of vaccines. Daily Kos should be standing up for consumers in the face of pharmaceutical companies' power and influence.

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On Dec 10, 2015, at 8:23 AM, Daily Kos Staff wrote:

From: Daily Kos Staff (Support staff)

Here is the line that we draw.

It is fine to talk about vaccinations in some contexts. But, the evidence is quite clear that the general pediatric sequence is safe and effective for the general population. If your arguments suggest otherwise, we're not okay with that here. We classify that as conspiracy theory because there's no evidence, no study, that seems to be sufficient to change your mind. If you are correct, every large medical association and all stable/credible governments are promulgating a big lie, conspiring to hide the truth from you. And, the lack of vaccinations among the general public causes harm by allowing some of these very dangerous diseases to remain viable.

There is no evidence that it is better for your individual child or the population as a whole to get a disease like measles or whooping cough rather than a vaccination.

All the standard childhood vaccines are well studied and have been in use for many years.

Vaccines in general are not particularly lucrative compared to other pharmaceuticals.

What is right for you and those for whom you are directly responsible is between you and your physician. But, what is right for the general population is not in question, and arguing otherwise is causing harm. We don't want Daily Kos used as a site for inaccurate or fraudulent information.

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So there you have it, dear readers. Yesterday I wrote about the suppression of free speech at Brown, starting with vaccine safety and now spreading like a live virus shedding on everyone in sight. When journalism joins this band of absolutist deniers of unwelcome speech, we are in trouble.

“While Brown should welcome a broad range of viewpoints, we should not allow ourselves to be used as a soapbox for whomever would like to come speak. There is a point at which the damage done by hosting a speaker outweighs the benefits.

“Last Friday, the Brown Bookstore hosted Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill, the authors of ‘The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic,’ for ‘a reading and [discussion] of their research.” Research is a highly generous word to use to describe what the authors have done. Essentially, they repackaged the last decade’s worth of claims that mercury causes autism, disregarding the actual research that shows those claims to be utterly false. Study after study has shown that autism is not caused by mercury in vaccines.’”

Ergo, we shouldn’t have been allowed to speak. Now – and it’s hard not to feel a bit of schadenfreude over it – Brown is mired in a much broader, but not much different, debate over free speech. Many Brown students, it seems, are against it when it doesn’t suit their purposes. In a long and thoughtful piece on the Daily Beast – “Brown University Professor Denounces ‘McCarthy’ Witch Hunts” – the threat to free expression becomes clear.

Outrage over minority oppression has morphed into the idea that certain kinds of speech are unwelcome on campus. She quotes an anonymous professor:

“More disconcerting than the nature and tone of recent protests to this professor is the lack of concern over freedom of speech—or what he referred to as ‘freedom of expression’—on campus.

“‘’Freedom of speech’ is a little tough,’ he said. ‘It’s not the perfect phrase to use, partly because we’re a private institution and we’re not talking about government action. I like to use ‘freedom of expression.’ Universities are supposed to be places of freedom of expression."

It’s worth reading the whole piece -- “I think freedom of speech in general has a lot of problems because of power dynamics, just racially and otherwise, so you have to be cautious,” sophomore Sierra Edd said” -- to get the flavor of what’s going on. It appears that students there, and across the country, are both both infantilizing themselves – help protect us from upsetting words! – and becoming the arbiters of the parameters of acceptable speech.

I’m not passing judgment on the validity of their substantive concerns – although the stifling of a discussion of Halloween costumes at Yale, my alma meter, was both spooky and goofy. Rather, it’s worth seeing how little value seems to be placed on free speech and free expression these days, especially by younger people. Did they miss Civics? Have helicopter parents made them feel like the center of the universe? Are they vaccine damaged?

It’s a topic we’re all familiar with from the vaccines and autism debate, which vaccine injury deniers have been trying to shut down any way they can. As I’ve said, the premise that ideas are too dangerous to discuss has no place in a democracy.

The article offers all kinds of remedies such as this: “For example, if governmental health officials publicize false statements linking child vaccines and autism, they could lawfully be censored or fired from their positions. They have no constitutional right to spread false statements antithetical to the mission of their agency or office.”

So censor or fire them – and, the article suggest, sue politicians if they suggest vaccines cause autism, just as the beef industry sued Oprah (note to Jurist: she won).

This all came together in one lovely package recently. AOA reader Judy Ritchie sent me a piece from the Concord Monitor that began: “NHTI professor Nathan Strong knew that inviting a prominent opponent of vaccination to speak to a class about the science of vaccines would be a little controversial.

“That turned out to be a good prediction, as long as ‘a little’ is translated as ‘very.’ Maybe even ‘very, very.’

Editor's Note: Nancy Tarlow DC has created a series of podcasts where “guests such as Barbara Loe Fisher & Tedd Koren discuss all things natural to ensure that your family experiences incredible health.” Click here to find them.

She writes AOA: “THIS is my passion. Educating people about the risks of vaccinations AND all the wonderful alternative’ treatments out there. I've worked with children with autism. I see how it destroys families and the stress it causes. I'm totally at a loss for words at how our government and media can allow this to continue. People are dying from getting too many vaccinations; their health is being severely impacted. Qualify of life has totally gone out the window for these people.

“I'm one of the lucky ones. I had an opportunity to see Barbara Loe Fisher speak back in '93 at a chiropractic convention. She touched my heart and opened my eyes to the dangers of vaccinations. I never forgot that day and educate people in my office about the dangers.

“I can't do it that way anymore. I needed a louder microphone that one person at a time. I would stay up at night feeling the calling to do this.”

Editor's Note: This review by Dr. Manuel Casanova takes the measure of the book "Neurotribes -- the Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity" by Steve Silberman. "Having some knowledge on the subject, I thought that Neurotribes was a painful read," Casanova writes. "Silberman’s arguments are constructed as a house of straws. ... The book glorifies autism by exalting its gifts but failing to emphasize its handicaps, drawbacks or comorbidities. It is true that the author mentions that autism is a handicap but at the same time compares the disability to computers using different operating systems, one with Microsoft and another using Linux. This comparison trivializes many of the handicaps faced by autistic individuals and is offensive to those more severely affected."

By Dr. Manuel Casanova

I finally got a chance to finish reading Steve Silberman’s widely publicized book “Neurotribes”. The same received the prestigious 2015 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction and some journalists have touted the same as the definite book on autism’s past. Being a history buff myself I decided to give it a try and read it during my long layovers on a round trip to Russia. Fortunately I managed to read it all with a few hours to spare. On the other hand, being my usual self, I misplaced the book with all of my annotations. This may play well for the reader as a complete revision of the book with all of my annotations would have required a longer book than the one presently reviewed.

The book itself has been proclaimed to be Neurodiversity’s manifesto and as such makes de rigueur claims of historical figures as having had Asperger’s, providing a putdown of psychiatry and medical sciences in general, and somehow managing to talk peripherally about homosexuality and/or transgender issues. The aim of such a divagation is to ascertain that autism spectrum disorders are an expression of normal variability within the human genome and that any handicaps attributed to the condition can be overcome with proper accommodations. If this were the case it is easy to see why Neurodiversity proponents downplay the need for treatment and research and find especially offensive the use of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). In order to sustain their allegations they claim that autism has always been around and that there has been no real increase in prevalence throughout the last few decades. They also tend to over generalize suggesting that a significant proportion of engineers, radio aficionados, science fiction buffs, and computer scientists fall within the autism spectrum. All of the aforementioned allegations are made without dwelling on arguments that can falsify their position while simultaneously trying to destroy the credibility and reputation of those who oppose them. In their exposition they will usually not provide references for their work, or in the case of Mr. Silberman, those given may be untraceable and therefore worthless. Neurotribes touches on all of the aforementioned aspects while following the Neurodiversity blueprint to a tee.

The medical profession tells great tales of decades past when people died from, or were disabled by, diseases such as polio and smallpox, and how the invention of vaccines stopped these epidemics. I believed that vaccines didn’t cause any diseases or problems and that they definitely saved lives. I also believed that those who refused vaccines were the very reason these diseases still existed.

But when I entered the “natural” community by choosing a midwife and breastfeeding, I was exposed to medical theories that differed. During my childbirth classes at the midwifery center, I was surprised when the student teaching the class brought up the subject of vaccines. She suggested that not getting any vaccines was a reasonable choice.

NOTE: Advocacy for vaccination rights is taking place on both sides of the pond. Age of Autism's UK Editor John Stone and valued contributor Angus Files spoke at the Public Petitions Committee - Scottish Parliament: 8th December 2015.

Editor's Note: Check out the new Billion Toddler March for Survival site created by Sally O. Elkordy. As she explains: "I have been interviewing parents of vaccine injured children since 2011 and have now compiled injuries by type of vaccine. It's EVIDENCE, plain and simple. Use it to its highest purpose. Thank you." The site includes dozens of interviews -- podcasts and YouTube -- with parents; the goal is "to persuade parents not to vaccinate their children." The site is easy to use and links to all kinds of videos, statements and other EVIDENCE, as Sally says. Worth a close look!

Non-communicable diseases have been increasing in recent decades, and have replaced communicable diseases as the leading cause of mortality globally. I hypothesized these non-communicable diseases have a strong anthropogenic (man-made) component. To test the hypothesis, I conducted a study that would identify pervasive 'causes' of disease. These are causes/contributing factors that would impact many diseases. Additionally, these 'causes' were restricted to foundational 'causes', tangible items that, for the most part, would be actionable (e.g., excessive smoking, excessive alcohol intake, excessive exposures to radiation, etc)

The results were reported in a recent eBook [1]. They showed myriad contributing factors to all major diseases, with some diseases having hundreds of potential foundational causes. While the different contributing factors had different weightings, it became clear that the translation of the 'stimulus' provided by each contributing factor to the emergence of a disease resulted from the synergy of multiple 'stimuli' operating in concert.

Why is this relevant to autism? There tend to be 'silos' of advocates who emphasize 1) vaccines as the major cause, or 2) electromagnetic field (EMF) exposures as the major causes, or 3) glyphosate ingestion, or 4) nitrosamines, or 5).......... They are all correct to some degree, but it is the synergy of these myriad contributing factors that will result in the emergence of autism. As my study showed, the bulk of these foundational causes is due, directly or indirectly, to the poorly regulated introduction of modern technology. All of the technologies listed above, and many of the unlisted others contributing to autism, have undergone rapid expansion into our economy in recent years, mirroring the rapid increase in autism (and many other non-communicable diseases as well).

But, as my study/book also shows, the potential foundational causes identified from the premier biomedical literature may be the tip of a much larger iceberg. The biomedical literature relative to causes of disease contains 1) good honest research, 2) poor honest research, and 3) 'manufactured' research. There are unknown numbers of articles 'manufactured' to show there are no links between products being studied and serious disease. Differentiating among these three types of published research to identify truth is not a simple task.

There is a fourth category, which is research that never sees the light of day in the published literature. It is difficult to estimate the level of such research, as it is equally difficult to estimate the amount of 'manufactured' research, because of their secretive nature. It is typically only when a whistle-blower comes forward, or 'discovery' is generated in a legal proceeding, that some of this 'manufactured' or unknown research comes to light.

A few years ago, I did a study of health effects of EMF combined with other stimuli[2]. I examined multiple literatures, not limited to the premier medical literature, and contacted many experts working in this area. I heard story after story of how researchers' best papers were rejected by journals because they reflected poorly on the industry, or research projects being terminated abruptly because they were starting to show serious adverse effects from EMFs, or researchers being personally harassed because their findings were opposite of what the industry was promoting. In the EMF adverse health effects field (as in the vaccine field), there is much manufactured research floating around in the literature, and much research showing adverse effects of EMF that has never seen the light of day. There is much EMF adverse effects research that cries out to be done, but will never get out of the starting blocks because it is not in the interests of government and industry to have these questions answered.

The case of Dr. William Thompson, CDC, is a shining example of the perversion of discomforting research results by (what I have termed in my book as) the Government-Industrial-Media Complex. Thompson is somewhat unique as a whistle-blower. Most whistle-blowers expose wrong-doings of others; Thompson has allegedly exposed the wrong-doings of others AND HIMSELF! The complete mainstream media blackout of Thompson's allegations, and the refusal of either branch of Congress to hold hearings on such serious allegations, lend credence to the accuracy of his allegations. In my book, I spend some time addressing the consequences of Thompson's allegations if true, and show e.g. the costs that will be incurred by the sub-set of African-American children as a result of not informing their parents of the increased risk of autism are on the order of ~$400 billion [3]. That does not include the costs for the other sub-set of children with Isolated Autism, which could be substantially larger because it includes all children in the pool, not only African-Americans.

(Orac:) When it comes to blogging, sometime’s it’s feast or famine. Some days there are more topics and stories that I’d like to blog about than I could ever get to, given that I generally only do one post per weekday, while other days I seriously think about skipping a day because there’s just nothing out there that interests me. This is one of the former kinds of days. Seriously, there was an embarrassment of riches last night, so much so that I had a hard time making up my mind what story to write about. The one that I ultimately chose only just edged out the second place choice, and then only at the last minute and then only because it is a followup to a post I did about about a month ago. I might well get to the runner up tomorrow, but for now it’s time to revisit a story I’ve done a lot of blogging about because it’s come up again.

How many of you remember Ben Swann? Well, he’s back. Regular readers might remember that Swann is the clueless, conspiracy-minded “investigative reporter” who anchors the evening news for WGCL-CBS46 in Atlanta. The location is important, because it’ means he’s the local news anchor for a major CBS affiliate who did a highly credulous story about the the “#CDCtruth” rally in October...

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Foster's comment:

Do you ever notice that Orac can never simply provide the facts and let the reader draw their own conclusions? Why is that Orac? Do you have that little faith in your readership? (You should.) Every sentence is filled with ad hominem attacks and vitriol, and you always seem to leave out details which are not consistent with the conclusion you wish your readers to draw.

Its fascinating to watch how Orac and everyone else here is so willing to put the cart before the horse. Apparently the credibility of Dr. William Thompson, a senior epidemiologist and research scientist at the CDC, is dubious enough that these kinds of serious claims do not warrant any sort of investigation. We wouldn't want to learn that everything we've been spouting about for years might not be true, now would we?

Paul Offit’s notorious article in which he claimed it would be “theoretically” safe to give 10,000 vaccines to an infant in one go remains the dogma underpinning the United Kingdom’s ever expanding vaccine schedule (EEVS), for which the latest edition is the Meningitis B vaccine, Bexsero. In a recent interview Prof Elizabeth Miller of Public Health England cites the 2002 article when referring to "strong scientific arguments against the immune overload hypothesis": Offit’s article is listed in the footnotes. The language is notable: Miller can scarcely cite strong evidence so she cites “arguments” instead. It should be clear that the supposed safety of the expanding schedule is based on a mixture of conjecture and whimsy. For the industry to market new products for your baby they have to have a dogma that there can never be too many and Offit created the dogma.

I first tried to highlight the yawning scientific gap in BMJ Rapid Responses in June 2004 quoting the words of the then Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson in an National Health Service pamphlet in answer to the question: “Does MMR overload young bodies?” To which Sir Liam responds:

"Again, all the evidence refutes this. In fact, a child's immune system is designed to cope with many different viruses at the same time, so a combined vaccine is a natural choice."

I asked mmrthefacts NHS website:

"Is the CMO entitled to present this as a medically established fact rather than a theoretical proposition? What is the experimental evidence that all children are equally able to sustain multiple exposure? What does the CMO mean by "designed?"

To which I had a reply after some pause:

"The CMO is entitled to present his statement about the immune system as a medically established fact rather than theoretical proposition. From the moment of birth a child's immune system is able to cope with the constant barrage of pathogens. As the CMO stated, this is what the..."immune system is designed cope tih (sic)..."As for example, the digestive system is "designed" to digest food and liver is "designed" to detoxify the blood. Part of the licensing process of any combination vaccine, such as MMR, has to show that the combination is safe and effective when administered to the age group for which it is intended.

There is recent research from the US which supports this statement as it has specifically looked at the ability of children's immune systems, estimating that a child's immune system could cope with 10,000 vaccines any one time. Please see Offit PA et al (2002) Addressing parents' concerns: Do multiple vaccines overwhelm or weaken infant's immune system?Pediatics, 109 (1): 124-9

Thanks

Support Team"

Apart from anything else it is a deceit to call it research, since it is simply a projection based on certain assumptions.

Some week later the head of the UK vaccine programme, Prof David Salisbury, announced on BBC television that a baby’s immune system could “tolerate one thousand vaccines”. When I queried this in correspondence Salisbury wrote to me in clarification:

"Turning to my comments on Newsnight - I suggest you read Paul Offit's paper - as I have done. On page 126, he states: "Current data suggest that the theoretical capacity determined by diversity of antibody variable gene regions would allow for as many as 109 (1,000,000,000) to 1011(100,000,000,000) different antibody specificities". And "... then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time" - not antigens. I was speaking very specifically about the infant immune system's ability to respond, in the context of the ridiculous suggestion that the new vaccine combination, containing far fewer antigens than the one it will replace, would overload the immune system. My words were "The immune system of a baby has got huge spare capacity to deal with challenge. If we didn't, the human race wouldn't survive. But let's look specifically at vaccine. This has been studied carefully. A baby's immune system could actually tolerate perfectly well 1,000 vaccines". At no point did I suggest that 1,000 vaccines would not increase the probability of adverse reactions - a quite different matter." (Email August 26, 2004 10.03 am)

One might have thought that if every infant’s immune system was that resourceful we would not have any need to fear diseases at all, let alone vaccinate against them – meanwhile Salisbury confesses that multiple vaccines heighten the risks.

I knew it was coming. With how 2015 was full of fear and vaccine bullying, I’m not surprised that vaccine discrimination would be next. Many of us have already experienced it privately in one way or another, some by a pushy physician at a medical clinic and others by a bossy school nurse, and it looks like more places are officially adopting the practice.

No matter where or when it happens, being discriminated against is uncomfortable. When that discrimination includes judging, trampling ones parental rights, and denying medical treatment, it’s more than uncomfortable. It’s downright frightening.

I’ve yet to be completely turned away from a clinic or from receiving services after being asked what my child’s vaccine status is. Most of the time, it’s no one’s business to hear that sort of personal information. Other times, when vaccines could be relevant, I tread lightly when offering that information. If I fear that treatment could be jeopardized, I tend to begin with a caveat, “Because my son suffered a vaccine injury, we do not completely follow the recommended vaccine schedule…” and hope that the person who’s listening is actually listening to what I’m saying. Most of the time I am being heard, but one night several years ago, I was not.

That happened when I brought my daughter to the Emergency Room. She’d been fighting a viral respiratory infection for just over 24 hours. With how young she was at the time, I knew it could turn into a serious situation. I’d consulted with our pediatrician, followed her suggestions, and was able to bring some relief during the day. Unfortunately, though, things went from bad to worse - and quickly - once night fell. Knowing that she needed help, I bundled my baby up and headed to the ER.

We were ushered back right away, but instead of treating my child, the ER doctor we were assigned insisted on wasting time. That began after his question, “Are vaccines up-to-date?” was answered with my, “No, we’re selectively vaccinating.” response.

At that point, the doctor completely ignored the medical emergency that my daughter was presenting and opted to berate me about vaccines. In an attempt to belittle me in front of the team of night-shift nurses, who were standing at the ready waiting for the doctor to respond to and act on my daughter’s current condition, he continued to question me. The nurses said nothing, and when the doctor continued his tirade, the nurses looked down. Knowing my rights, I didn’t let that man’s words bother me. I kept my head held high and calmly waited for the doctor to finish the verbal assault.

I’m sure that when most of our readers first heard about a shooting this week at a regional center in California for developmentally disabled people, they had the same chilling thought – oh lord, please let this not involve anyone in the autism world. It turned out that the victims happened to be from the county health department (although I heard a woman say on TV that one person had worked with autistic kids), but that of course did nothing to diminish the fear, sadness, and sense of vulnerability.

Chris Christie put it this way: “If a center for the developmentally disabled can be the target of a terrorist attack, then any place in American can be the target of a terrorist attack.

Marie Simonton wrote in a comment: “My son receives services from Inland Regional Center. We have been praying that his former and current caseworkers were not among the victims. They just released the names of the victims and are relieved that they were not among them. Our hearts break for those who were lost and for their families who are left behind to grieve. May God fill their hearts with peace and solace.”

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One thing that does no one any good is to confabulate conspiracies out of heartbreak. As soon as the shooting happened, my Facebook news feed got clogged with posts about how there was a SWAT drill going on at the same time nearby and that this whole tragedy was somehow a setup for something or other.

We saw this with Sandy Hook, too, which was supposedly a “false flag” operation, whatever that means. In that case, our Managing Editor’s husband was friends with the family of a victim. And we heard it about 9.11, in particular that it wasn’t a plane that hit the Pentagon. I live just a few miles from there, and people I know saw the plane. What’s more, a friend was a first responder, and part of the plane was intact inside the building.

We have enough real conspiracies on our hands that we ought to make an extra effort to avoid ones that lack good evidence.

Another thread that I really don’t like is that Islam is an inherently violent religion. I won’t run those comments and people who think I should and say that’s censorship are welcome to read other blogs. I think those comments go way beyond the purview of a Web site on autism. Remember, the Somalis in Minneapolis, dealing with a terrible autism rate, are part of our community. Telling them the religion they rely on for support and strength is an evil sham is not part of our mission, to say the least.

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Before this happened I was already planning to republish Contributing Editor Kent Heckenlively’s wise words about the season:

“Some thoughts as we enter the holiday season ... It is important to remember that not everyone is surrounded by large wonderful families. Some of us have problems during the holidays and sometimes are overcome with great sadness when we remember the loved ones who are not with us. And, many people have no one to spend these times with and are besieged by loneliness. We all need caring, loving thoughts right now.”

Also worth celebrating is that AOA has just completed another successful annual fund-drive, thanks to Anonymous Donor who put up $5,000 and the dozens of readers who more than matched it. We rely on the kindness of our friends. (Friends who know we are tax-deductible!)

This headline does not overhype the article, which is a spectacularly – spectacularly! -- good look at how pharma has taken over medicine, government and mainstream media. Embedded within, and all the more powerful for it, is a look at the vaccine disaster. Sample:

“I’ll say it first: we no longer live in a democracy. We live in a fascist Pharmatopic Republic.

“The saddest part about living in this fascist state is that most people in America are not even aware of this new reality. In fact, in the public shaming of those who want safe vaccines, the American public is an unwitting victim of mass propaganda – and those doing the shaming are analogous to jack-booted thugs. Those in the blogosphere resort immediately to ad-hominem attacks at the first hint of logic and rational discourse. Even asking a question on vaccine safety makes one suddenly ‘anti-vax.’ (Disclosure: Both of my sons are fully vaccinated. I draw the line at HPV.)”

This seems like quite a turnaround for Kos, which I wrote about in March when one of our own astute commenters, Twyla, tried to leave a comment there. Here’s what she got back.

“The vaccine-autism link has been debunked by many careful studies, and here at Daily Kos we consider it conspiracy theory. CT postings are not permitted here. Postings that advocate this theory can get you banned at Daily Kos.”

I once wrote a piece called “Why Progressives Don’t Get Autism” (Kos actually mentioned it as a point at least worth considering.) I may have to amend that to Why All Progresssives Except Dr. James Lyon-Weller (and Bobby Kennedy Jr.) Don’t Get Autism. As I’ve tried, sometimes vainly, to argue, protecting citizens from rampant domination by business (the end result of which is in fact the textbook definition of fascism) is actually a progressive issue. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.

“If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

Gary Null does a fabulous job here adding up all the pieces of corruption, collusion and cover-up. This is a health care scandal unfolding before our eyes. We continue to watch as our children become the chronically ill and disabled generation, and we pretend it just isn't happening.

Each year, tens of millions of American children are vaccinated according to the vaccination schedule set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The current CDC schedule recommends over 25 vaccines by the time a child reaches two years of age. (1) The majority of the parents of these children follow the advice of their physicians and the CDC, which state that vaccines are both safe and effective and that, in order to protect hundreds of millions of individuals against disease, we must follow their recommendations.

Our medical authorities assure us that they would never allow our children to be exposed to something unproven or known to be dangerous. They claim that vaccines, even when multiple injections are given on a single day, are safe and do “not cause any chronic health problems.” (2) Further, they claim that the ingredients contained in vaccines are either harmless or found in such miniscule quantities that they pose no health risks. The medical establishment also states unequivocally that there is no connection between vaccination and the rising incidence of autism spectrum disorder. Anyone who questions the safety of vaccination is immediately labeled as irresponsible or a quack who subscribes to pseudoscience.

Given that vaccines aremandatory for most children in public schools, it makes sense that they should be scientifically proven to be safe. However, in a careful analysis of thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature on toxicology and immunology, nowhere can we find evidence for these claims on vaccine safety are based upon a gold standard of clinical research: long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies.

Gary Null goes on to explain that there's never been research on "the cumulative toxicological impact of the CDC vaccine schedule over a long period of time." Furthermore, there has never a simple comparison study of the health outcomes of fully-vaccinated and never-vaccinated children. Instead of "scientific proof" that vaccines are safe, what we have is "pure propaganda."